I'm invited up to a friends cabin for a day of fishing on Long Lake. He's not a big fisherman and he tells me that they have never had good luck on the lake...

I would love to help him find fish. So I have been researching the lake.It has been stocked with walleye since the early 90s but the DNR hasn't seen an increase in fish numbers or size... The DNR says the crappie are low abundance and small. Also, the Sunfish are average abundance with 90% over 5" and only 1% reaching 8".. NOrtherns supposedly are abundant but small..

So this lake is a deep-water lake. The deepest is about 110 ft. and I would say by looking at it the average is around 40 or more feet deep.. Almost all the shorelines drop off quickly with a few exceptions. There is one bay that has a shallow area with some streams flowing in. marked with some vegetation.. A few rock piles and lots of sand.

I would like to challenge the DNR net results and get some big gills and crappies. How does the depth of the lake factor into my gameplan? Anyone ever fish Long Lake? Any tips?

Or any tips from the Aitkin area would be nice to/ Like where the fish are in the lakes and how the bites been? Hot Baits??

I would think the quick drop offs and deep water would put spawing habitat at a premium. I'd probably look to the shallow water areas the best you can as thats likely where the fish will be spawning. The fish will also be drawn in my warm water right now so either the shallow areas or shorelines that have been windblown for a day or two. The wind will push warm surface water up against the shoreline, so that would be another good place to look.

Logan, I grew up fishing this lake. My grandma used to have a cabin there years ago. I still go back and fish it often just for the memories. There are a lot more people fishing now than there used to be, but they still don't know how to fish it. It may sound crazy but here me now, believe me later. Bass Buster Beetle Spins! Yes I know it's old school but they still work on that lake. Clear water, work the points, bays, bull rush edges, and weedy dropoffs, casting or trolling, slow roll them down the dropoffs,use a white one with the red dot or a yellow with black stripes. Get the biggest ones and have some fun. Work the SW end of the lake, lots of stucture. Middle of the lake has a couple of sunken islands, work the deep edges for walleyes. Mainly you catch northerns and bass, a few walleyes mixed in, and plenty of crappies and sunfish. I have caught as many 100 notherns in 2 days on this lake doing this + bass and crappies. If this pattern isn't producing, switch to trolling shadraps up and down the drop offs by zigzagging. If it's walleyes you really want head for Dam Lake across the road. They won't be as big but easier to catch. Long does have some huge fish because of the depths, bass over 7lbs and northerns over 20lbs and 10lb walleyes. Have fun and be safe.

Welcome to the site domino dave!! and thank you for the info.. Beetle spins were responsible for almost all of my pike!!

I did get out and hit the lake with some interesting results. No Walleyes this time but we weren't far from them as I did see another boat near us pull one in.First, right when we arrived at the lake (12:30 PM) I immediately walked over to the edge of his dock and dropped a green tube jig in between the dock and boat launch. Out flew a big fat rock bass, Bam! pulled him up. My buddy started laughing and said he's never seen one caught by his dock before.

Then we took the boat around and just looked at the areas we were interested in. The water is so clear we could see a lot of what we were dealing with. We were observing bottom types, vegetation, and anything else we could see. I figured since there is only a small amount of shallow water why not start there. We moved by the reeds and tried a few techniques as we drifted through. Thanks to Domino Dave and his suggestion of a beetle spin I took two pike out of the reeds before we moved on..

I noticed that there was cabbage out in the deeper water.. We moved out there and couldn't keep the perch off our line. I tossed a shiner and beetle spin for a while ended up with several more northern and a few LM bass .. So we moved on again.

headed to one of the only areas in the lake that had a lot of vegetables.. Got into it and pulled some more bass and a few more northern. And two sunfish.. The closer we got to shore the more bass were coming out. Now that the shallow waters were pretty much fished. We decided to change pace.

Over to some of the drops we moved.. Tossing jigs, shiners, beetle spins and rapalas.. We also used slip bobbers over leeches and shiners.. We weren't catching much until I tie on a little red octopus jig. I went on to catch far to many rock bass to count.. Together we caught probably forty of them.. Maybe more.

At the end of the day. My friend caught two of his largest pike ever. Together we had probably 15 northerns, 10 LM bass, 9 perch, a few sunfish, and about fifty dang rock bass (almost all big)..

I wanted to prove to him that more fish were in the lake than he had told me so we didn't focus on trying to locate walleyes. Next time I'm gonna give it a shot though!

My friend told me at the end of the day that he had a lot more fun than he expected. "I only expected like 5 or 6 fish at best...".